Austrian Supreme Court makes a final ruling in a long-running Facebook speech takedown case, ruling it must remove defamatory posts about a politician worldwide — Austria's Supreme Court has dismissed Facebook's appeal in a long running speech takedown case — ruling it must remove references …
The fate of TikTok in the United States got even more confusing this week. The U.S. Justice and Commerce Departments sent conflicting messages today about TikTok’s future, which is now up in the air with the upcoming administration transition.
The Department of Commerce said Thursday it would abide by an injunction issued October 30 by the District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that would have blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. starting from today. In a statement, the department said it is complying with the court’s order and its prohibition against TikTok “HAS BEEN ENJOINED, and WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT, pending further legal developments.”
But on the same day, the Justice Department appealed the Pennsylvania court’s ruling just as it was set to go into effect.
But wait! It gets even more convoluted: another court–the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington–just set new deadlines in December for ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, and the Trump administration, to file documents in a case involving a divestment order that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok to continue operating in the U.S.
ByteDance reached an agreement with Oracle and Walmart in September, but the future of the deal is also uncertain.
The Justice Department’s appeal is part of a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government on September 18 by three TikTok creators, Douglas Marland, Cosette Rinab and Alec Chambers. Each has more than a million followers on TikTok, which has about 100 million users in the U.S., and argues that a ban would impact their ability to earn a living from brand collaborations on the app.
On Oct. 30, Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued an injunction against the U.S. government’s restrictions. In her ruling, Beetlestone wrote that the “government’s own descriptions of the national security threat posted by the TikTok app are phrased in the hypothetical.”
This case is separate from the one ByteDance filed against the U.S. government in a federal appeals court in Washington D.C. Earlier this week, ByteDance asked that court to vacate the U.S. order forcing it to sell the app’s American operations. ByteDance told TechCrunch in a statement that without an extension on the November 12 deadline, it “[had] no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the U.S.”
The Commerce Department’s statement today, along with the Justice Department’s appeal and the new deadlines in the divestment case, underscore the confusion about the future of the Trump administration’s actions against TikTok after President-Elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20.
While some analysts believe the Biden administration may give Chinese tech companies that were targeted under the current administration, including Huawei and ByteDance, a chance to re-negotiate with the government, that may take second priority as Biden deals with domestic issues, including the resurgence of COVID-19 in the U.S.
DHS says US election was the most secure, with “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised” — “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” — SHARE All sharing options
Total PC market, including tablets, grew to 124.5M units in Q3, up 23% YoY; Lenovo shipped 23.5M devices, up 11.6% YoY, Apple shipped 22.1M, up 41% YoY — Shanghai (China), Bengaluru (India), Singapore, Reading (UK) and Portland (US) - Thursday, 12 November, 2020
Reports that Dominion Software, which provides voting tabulation tools to about half the states in the U.S., “deleted” millions of votes have been soundly rebuffed after outgoing President Trump parroted numbers from a random internet forum.
Tweeting Thursday morning about baseless claims of election fraud, Trump cited OANN, a right-wing news outlet, which itself seemed to have found its numbers in a thread on pro-Trump Reddit knock-off thedonald.win. (The tweet was quickly wrapped in a warning that the contents are disputed.)
The anonymous person posting there claimed to have compared numbers from Edison Research, a company that does exit polls and other election-related measures, to those from Dominion, and come up with very different sums. The methods are not very well explained, nor are the results. It’s not really clear what is being compared to what and why, or for what reason this alleged fraud was published publicly by the company supposedly perpetrating it. No one has verified (if that’s the word) this analysis in any way.
In a comment to Politifact, Edison President Larry Rosin wrote that “we have no evidence of any voter fraud,” and that it pretty much has no idea what the purported analysis is referring to.
Dominion attracted attention earlier in the week when it seemed that a glitch had caused a number of votes to be registered for President-elect Joe Biden instead of Trump. But the miscount was immediately caught and found to be the result of human error. The company has dedicated a page to combating the misinformation around its software.
Politifact rated Trump’s claim “Pants on Fire,” calling it “ridiculous” for good measure. It’s worth noting that the tweet didn’t even state the numbers of the supposed fraud correctly.
There doesn’t seem to be any merit to the “analysis” at all, but it provides an excellent example of how people who are unfamiliar with how the voting apparatus works — which is to say almost everyone not directly involved — tend to find the software portion inherently untrustworthy.
Yet there is no way to count, tabulate and verify millions of ballots in hours or days after an election that does not rely heavily on private software tools, and it is in fact highly reliable and secure. The process of elections is bipartisan and extremely closely monitored.
Elections commissioners and state leadership have been unanimous in declaring the election a surprisingly smooth one considering the difficulties of holding one during a pandemic and with extremely high turnout both in person and by mail.
A major federal committee under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency today called last week’s election “the most secure in American history… There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. We can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”
Despite accusations from a dwindling number of highly placed individuals in the government, there has been no evidence presented that there was any significant voter fraud or other irregularities in last week’s election, which resulted in the victory of former vice president, now President-elect Joe Biden.
iOS 14.3 beta code indicates Apple may will suggest third-party apps to users during the iPhone or iPad setup process, likely to appease antitrust concerns — As Apple has been investigating for anti-competitive practices, the company is working on new ways to avoid these accusations …
Many Mac users experienced app slowdowns during the launch of Big Sur, possibly due to issues with Apple's OCSP service being unable to validate certificates — Even Macs that didn't upgrade to Big Sur had problems. — Mac users today began experiencing unexpected issues …
Juro Osawa / The Information : Sources: Alibaba names senior AI researcher Dayiheng Liu as the head of its Qwen project, bringing clarity ...
